city-centered

Updated: May 29, 2025

The specialized, interdependent structure of civilization with its city control of the hinterland, its products and inhabitants, enabled the city-centered oligarchy to accumulate and concentrate wealth and monopolize power, to skim the cream from the available milk, monopolize the cream, distribute the skimmed milk judiciously and thus perpetuate its ascendancy through generations and centuries.

Scott Nearing - Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History